ARTICLES ABOUT BOBBY RAHAL BY DATE - PAGE 5

Imagine finding a nail in a can of your favorite soft drink or glass chips in a slice of pizza. The brand-destroying potential is immense. Honda doesn't have that serious an image problem yet. But a second straight disaster this year at the Indianapolis 500 can always turn a rust spot in their reputation into an ugly rash that could dismay and discourage consumers at all levels of the company's operation. That's the enormous and sometimes overlooked pressure that comes with splashing your product name onto a machine every bit as fickle as the rancorous HAL in "2001: A Space Odyssey."

He ranks behind only A.J. Foyt on the Indy-car victory list, yet Mario Andretti has only one regret from his 31-year career on the circuit: That he hasn't won more often. That's one reason he is so determined to do well in his final Indy-car race-the Monterey Grand Prix Sunday at Laguna Seca (Calif.) Raceway. In his final season on the circuit, Andretti is winless. "Laguna means so much to me," Andretti, 54, said from his office in Nazareth, Pa. "Believe me, I'm going in with the frame of mind with good, positive results."

Michael Andretti hopes a turnaround for his season came along with a dominating victory Sunday in the Toronto Molson-Indy. If it did, though, Andretti says the reason is probably off the track, where Chip Ganassi Racing recently signed veteran Indy-car engineer Mo Nunn to help sort things out. Whatever made the difference, though, the 31-year-old Andretti was able to outrace a variety of troubles Sunday to end Team Penske's seven-race winning...

Things kept going bump in the night Saturday in qualifying for the Indianapolis 500. Davy Jones bumped Mike Groff. Groff bumped teammate Bobby Rahal. Rahal bumped rookie Mark Smith. Another rookie, Mauricio Gugelmin, even bumped himself. Officially, because Groff, Rahal and Gugelmin first withdrew their cars, only Smith's was bumped. Whatever, it all happened in the last half-hour Saturday, and it left Rahal ecstatic, Scott Goodyear on the bubble and Jones wondering whether he really had made the field after posting the ninth-fastest time of the month.

Bobby Rahal is in the unusual position of having to hope he gets bumped from the Indy 500 qualifying lineup this weekend. "I think I am, yeah," he said Tuesday after running nearly 223 m.p.h. in the Penske-Ilmor he'll use to get back in the field should the Honda-powered car he qualified last weekend get bumped. "You want to go out, go fast and try to win," Rahal said. "I think with this car we can." With the Hondas that Rahal and teammate Mike Groff qualified last weekend, Rahal knows he can't.

There is pride on both sides, and to some measure, understanding. Out of that combustible combination Bobby Rahal hopes to find a resolution of the mess in which he seems, for the second year in a row, to have found himself. When he came to the Indianapolis 500 a year ago with an experimental chassis and failed to make the field for the first time in his career, the 1986 Indy 500 winner said, "I'll never come back here again without an alternative position." Now here he is in never-never land.

It's a given that the sport of auto racing is fueled by sponsorship dollars. No team can win races without the fulltime backing of corporate sponsors. Now, with the announcement that Schaumburg-based Motorola is backing Bobby Rahal's second car, to be driven by Mike Groff on the 16-race Indy Car circuit, an extra dimension-a fuel additive, if you will-has been introduced. "There are technical things that Motorola can bring to the party that are just as important as the financial," says Rahal.

Arthur C. Bly Sr., 79, a retired race car driver, died Sunday in the Lexington Streamwood Health Care Center in Streamwood. Mr. Bly, a Wood Dale resident, drove midget and sprint cars in the 1930s and 1940s. He built racing engines for Mike Rahal, father of Bobby Rahal. Mr. Bly was an original member of the Sports Car Club of America. Survivors include three sons, Donald, Gerald and Arthur II; three daughters, Lynn O'Kane, Kimberly Fitpold and Kathy; and 11 grandchildren. Visitation will be from 5 to 9 p.m. Wednesday in The Oaks Funeral Home, 1201 E. Irving Park Rd., Itasca.

Al Unser Jr. and Bobby Rahal, drivers who have known greatness but not in 1993, dueled Sunday at the front of the Molson Indy Vancouver, with Unser capturing his first victory since the 1992 Indianapolis 500. "It's been a long, hard struggle," Unser said. Unser, who started the day in fifth position in his Galles Lola-Chevrolet C, took the lead from Rahal two-thirds of the way through the race and finished 11.2 seconds ahead of Rahal, who won the 1992 points championship. Stefan Johansson of Sweden moved ahead of pole-sitter Scott Goodyear with one lap remaining in the 102-lap event to wind up third as Chevrolet engines swept the first three places.

Nigel Mansell went over the hill at top speed. The British racing star celebrated his 40th birthday by winning the New England 200 after a stirring three-car duel with Paul Tracy and Emerson Fittipaldi. Mansell, whose Lola-Ford started from the pole, passed Tracy while the two ran in traffic on the 197th lap and prevailed by 45-hundredths of a second, with Fittipaldi, Tracy's teammate, 8.8 seconds behind. "If you've got to turn 40, this is the way to do it," Mansell said.